Bono has branded people churlish for complaining about U2’s move to Holland to get lower taxes.

The singer opened his heart to Gay Byrne last night in his Meaning Of Life show and insisted being good businessmen doesn’t make U2 bad people.

He said: “The shock horror moment here is U2 behaving like a business.

“We live in a small rock in the North Altantic and we would be underwater were it not for very clever people working in Government and in the revenue who made tax competitiveness a central part of Irish economic life.

“It’s the reason why we have companies like Google or Facebook and indeed I helped bring those companies to Ireland so it is more than churlish for Irish people to say:’Well, we don’t want an Irish company involved in that stuff that we do want everyone else.’

“We do pay a lot of tax but we are tax sensible as every business is and why is it - because I am involved in these some people think are idealistic but I think are very pragmatic things - why can’t U2 be tough in business?”

Intense Bono said he is not a walkover and deals with all issues in the same way.

He said: “This thing of the warm fuzzy feeling I would like people to get over that because that’s not who I am.

“I am tough and I may sing form a very private and intimate place and I make art but I am tough minded and intellectually rigorous I hope.

“And I think U2’s tax business is our own business and it’s not just to the letter of the law it is to the spirit of the law.

“And in Ireland especially at this moment when really people are hurting so badly and are being deeply affected by problems they had no part in creating.

“I am amazed at the intelligence of the Irish people actually in figuring a way out through this because they could be out on the streets and torching the place and you would have to be sympathetic.

“But they are being smarter than that and realising we have to attract jobs and we have to get through this. And I think it is heroic actually - my kids go to a regular school a non fee paying school I don’t think of myself as removed but to answer your question I probably must be.”

The U2 frontman opened up about his life and spirituality to Gay Byrne and said he became involved in campaigning thanks to Bob Geldof and Live Aid.

He said: “I owe Bob big time for turning my life upside down or right side up depending on your view.”

Bono said he is a committed Christian but feels the church is fragmented into too many different religions.

He wears the crucifix that Pope John Paul II gave him every hour of every day. And Bono said being a child from a mixed marriage was sometimes difficult and he spoke of the tough relationship he had with his father.

He said: “My mother died died at her own father’s funeral right at the side of the grave.

“It took her a few days - she had a stroke and it was a few days later when we gathered around the bed I think at the Mater Hospital and said goodbye to her.”

Afterwards Bono turned into an angry young man and his relationship with his had was fractious.

But he said: “It’s my fault and I realised that later in life and I realised he was really doing his best.”

Bono said the band first got into religion after meeting a member of the Christian group Shalom and both Bono and The Edge almost quit U2.

The U2 frontman opened up about his life with the media veteran

He said: “It was Edge and me really but he said to me: ‘It’s right, the world is a broken place there are a lot of broken lives and this is really not the way to go about anything useful with our lives so we both left the band.”

It was just after their debut album and it was Paul McGuinness who coaxed them back in.

Bono added: “And he said: ‘Would you mind speaking to God about the commitments I have made on your behalf to do another tour? I presume breaking your contract wouldn’t be in accordance with God.”

The lads agreed to do one more album and tour which was October and it was during that time the Edge started to write Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Bono revealed: “Somehow we started to realised our music was the way we spoke to the world and these were prayers of a kind and what were we doing hanging out with these people who didn’t understand they had somehow turned God into a very retail relationship.”

Bono said it was his fault he and his dad fought but he feels he has inherited his father’s voice.

Growing up Bob Hewson believed to dream was to be disappointed but Bono said having faith was the thing that got him through.

He added: “It’s my revenge on that idea to have the most impossible dreams - that was my way of getting back at him - he could have been anything he was wonderful painter and a beautiful singer.

“I believed in my friends and I believed in the bands and I believed you were as good as the arguments you get.

“I think had I been left on my own I could have been like all the people I don’t like people in the corner of a bar with big ideas that never came to anything and it just turned me bitter and I would probably be looking at someone like me now going the letting the wine turn to vinegar.”

Bono told how he used to fly in from the Elevation tour dates to sit at his father’s bedside to give his brother Norman a break.

He said: “I was sleeping with him the night before he died he woke up - he had Parkinson’s at this point as well as everything else so he was whispering.

“I called the nurse I said: ‘What’s up da?’ She’s got her ear down and I have my ear down.

“I could just hear him and he said: ‘F**k off. I just want out of here, I just want to go home. And those were his last words. What a great exit. And I’m sure he is at home and I am sure it will be a lot more of a home than 10 Cedarwood was without my mother.”